Tesla Model S P85D Shortchanges on Horsepower, Owners in Norway Claim

At the time of the vehicle’s introduction, Tesla claimed that the vehicle had a combined motor output of 691 horsepower. While semantically that’s true—at launch the P85D’s front motor was rated at 221 hp, while the rear was rated at 470 hp—the cars were rated by the sum of what their power sources can produce individually, not on what their powertrain does produce as a whole.

The owners, who paid about $101,000 for their P85Ds (using today’s currency-conversion rates), allege that they paid about $16K extra to get what they thought was an additional 300 horsepower, but they only received 47 hp more than what the regular P85 then offered. Last year, the Scandinavian country’s consumer council stepped in as a mediator, and more recently Norway’s Consumer Dispute Commission ruled in favor of the Tesla owners. And now Tesla is in the process of contesting that ruling in an Oslo court, with the next hearing scheduled for December.

BY MARC URBANO

Tesla has contended with similar claims ever since the launch of its P85D, which for the first time offered all-wheel drive and separate motors for the front and rear axles. Almost exactly two years ago, Tesla chief technical officer J.B. Straubel wrote in a company blog post:

“Since the battery electric horsepower rating varies it is not a precise number to use for specifying the physical capability of an EV. The motor shaft horsepower, when operating alone, is a more consistent rating. In fact, it is only this (single or combined) motor shaft horsepower rating that is legally required to be posted in the European Union.”

If that sounds like an amorphous reply to you, we agree. He’s clearly pointing to the all-wheel-drive model’s inverter hardware as the place where this overclocking of sorts takes place. While the P85D has been supplanted by the P90D, a while ago Tesla confirmed that the P85D (the same as our long-term car) has a maximum output of 463 horsepower and that the 70D could muster 329 hp from its pair of motors, which are individually rated at 257 hp. We reached out to the company for an update and had not received a response at the time of posting.

With many more all-wheel-drive electric cars with multiple traction motors on the way in the near future, you can be sure we’ll revisit this one again soon—perhaps with some help from a dyno.